Chuck Schumer said on Thursday that President Trump “doesn’t like democracy” and that his reluctance to tax the top 1% shows he’s “on the side of a bunch of very wealthy billionaires.”
Speaking about the devastating effects of Trump’s tariffs, the Senate minority leader told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, “I am focused on showing the American people how bad Trump’s economics are for them, how he is putting our democracy at risk.”
He also addressed Trump’s war on Harvard University after the Ivy League college refused to dump its DEI policies, which prompted Trump to drastically cut research funding for the school.
Schumer went on to say, “President Trump’s got to learn something. Not everyone’s going to agree with him. And he can’t illegally use the power of the federal government to say, ‘We’ll cut your tax status, we’ll stop sending you money illegally, because I don’t like what you say.’”
He said that even past Republican presidents including Ronald Reagan and George Bush did not retaliate in the same way against entities that opposed them. “It is so un-American … he goes way beyond where any president should go, because he doesn’t really — he doesn’t like democracy. He doesn’t like to hear anybody oppose what he does. And maybe it’s because people are learning that he’s not on the side of the American people. He’s on the side of a bunch of very wealthy billionaires.”
He continued: “He keeps trying to put up these diversionary smoke screens. But the trouble is, they’re not just diversionary. They are very damaging to this country and to the concept of this country, where we debate, we have freedom of speech.” He added, “You can’t use the powers of the government illegally to try to shut someone up.”
Schumer explained that accusing Harvard of antisemitism as part of the basis for its cuts was not in “good faith” and that the Trump administration was “acting in a lawless, reckless, vicious way.”
Harvard has sued the Trump administration for freezing $2.2 billion in funding.
You can watch the full MSNBC interview in the video above.
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